I’m not sure I understand your post.
You state that: “Rarified glass (by this I assume you are referring to the Noctilux that I use with my GH1) on a m4/3 is a bit absurd.”
By “rarified glass” I assume you mean expensive glass, at least that’s the implication when the following sentence in your post states, referring to your using your Nokton on your 4/3 camera, “…but it fits price-wise with the body,” Which suggests that you believe the Noctilux does not fit “price wise” with a 4/3 body.
But what does price have to do with it?
Are you suggesting that whatever the attributes that the Noctilux might have, they are too costly and wasted on the GH1 or that the GH1 is not a good enough camera to make use of what the Noctilux can do? If so I respectfully submit that you are mistaken. Elsewhere in this forum there are numerous posts attesting to the fact that, at least up to 16X20 prints (big enough most of the time for most of us), the G1 or GH1 easily holds its own against much more costly DSLRs., and, as I and others have observed, it is far easier to focus the Noctilux on a GH1 than it is on any rangefinder camers.
Moreover, in my opinion, the market price of a lens has nothing at all to do with whether it’s a good tool to use on a M4/3 camera. For an example in which the relative prices of the camera body and lens are reversed, I sometimes use a lens on my 4/3 cameras even though it is comparatively very inexpensive, just because it is so compact and I love the way that it draws—a 50+ year old Leica f/3.5 50mm collapsible Elmar. One might observe that this lens perhaps does not fit “price-wise” because it is an old, uncoated inexpensive lens. Let me go further, I very occasionally, just for the fun of it, also use an even older 50mm Leica lens, an f/2 Summar, again because of the “dreamy glow” that it can produce in the right hands. That “glow’ is actually flare, of course, but flare can be a powerful creative tool, if used carefully in the right light.
Which brings us to the “legendary glow” of the old Noctilux. As David Farkas observes in his recent review of the new Noctilux,
“Part of the look of the lens (i.e., the old Noctilux) comes from the fact that Dr. Mandler didn’t correct for the blue spectrum of light. So, especially on B&W, the image seems to glow. I know a lot of people really love this. It just was never my taste. If I have to stop down to f/2 to get a sharp picture, what’s the point?"
I am one of those people who love that Noctilux glow even if you can’t cut yourself on the files it produces.
Besides loving to use the expensive old Noctilux on the much less expensive GH1 camera body to produce images with that Mandler glow, I also love the following:
• looking at paintings of Monet’s “blurry” water lilies;
• reading aloud James Joyce’s “Finegan’s Wake” even though he appears never to have learned how to punctuate a sentence;
• listening to Bill Evans’ forty year old recordings of incomparable solo jazz piano renderings on vinyl records driven by a tube amplifier;
• driving 50 year old 356 series Porsches that are slow by today’s standards, but deliver a matchless experience on a tight country road;
• driving almost any electric or hybrid car;
* holding hands with my wife while watching a good classic black and white film.
As to the analogy that using the Noctilux on an M4/3 camera is “akin to wearing a tux to the drive-through window at McDonalds,” I don’t much like the food at McDonalds, so not to worry, but I have been known to wear a very good and expensive twenty year old wool tweed sport jacket with old jeans and running shoes.
) of these lenses produces bokeh that I find most pleasing.
